Colorful banner with icons representing summer saying Summer of Making
In 1967, 100,000 people gathered in San Francisco for the Summer of Love. In 2020, we at Hack Club hosted the Summer of Making. It wasn't an event or a program. It was a theme for the summer and a challenge for students to take on. It was also a summer like no other, with hackers around the world stuck at home. To support makers, we distributed $50,000 in free electronics (thanks GitHub!) & built Snapchat streaks for coding—but really Summer of Making was about the
makers
. We left it them to get hacking & they built some pretty awesome things…

Shipping hardware grants to everywhere from the bustling streets of Lagos to the middle of Los Angeles…

We focus a lot on software at Hack Club. It’s soft, after all. This summer we left our comfort zone. Global pandemic—generally a bad start to summer—left us with $50k of unused grant money from GitHub. We thought about saving it. Instead we gave it away to students as a kind of fun experiment: distributing hardware to teenage makers with cool project ideas. One thing we liked about hardware grants was that bits—however magical—are ultimately constrained by atoms. It seemed right to connect over building physical things during a summer when personal connections relied on the internet more than ever.

We shipped hardware to

twenty eight

different countries & every inhabited continent.

nikhiljose ’s package
@nikhiljose’s package
blucashbaugh ’s package
@blucashbaugh’s package
dinaelhanan ’s package
@dinaelhanan’s package

300

Makers Supported

81

Arduino Projects

16

Average Maker Age

1950

Shopping Carts Made

70

Retailers Used

143

Different Cities

Using hardware to store

memories

Sulthan Nizarudin, a 18-year-old from Kerala (India), used his hardware to create a polaroid-style camera to take fun photos with friends! The project uses a Raspberry Pi, a camera module, thermal printer and more!
Ellen’s Raspberry Pi creation
Ellen’s Raspberry Pi creation

Using hardware to

save lives

Ellen Xu, a 15-year-old from San Diego, made a machine learning algorithm to run on a Raspberry Pi to help people diagnose Kawasaki disease, the #1 heart disease in children in the U.S. & Japan.

Using hardware to

have fun

Everyone loves LEDs, and they were super popular this summer! Patrick & Addison from Illinois worked on a Smart Album Cover Display, that detects the currently playing song through a microphone and shows the album art.

Using hardware to make

fire beats

Onur Sertgil, a 17 year old from Turkey, had always wanted to get started with digital music production. Using his hardware grant he built a fully custom MIDI controller that's capable of making some epic beats!

As part of Summer of Making we built Scrapbook. The idea: share updates of what you’re working on every day. So as Hack Clubbers are learning & building projects, short video or photo updates go into a Slack channel. Through a Slack bot, an Airtable, & a Next.js website making everything browsable, we made a site full of amazing things built this summer.

Hack Clubbers shared

5,628 creations

Explore Scrapbook →
Made by  austin
Made by @austin
Taken by  rishi
Taken by @rishi
Made by  lskaling
Made by @lskaling

414

Makers

1,002

Git Commits

11PM

Most Common Post Time

74

Highest Streak

133

Most Individual Scraps

35

Different Timezones

Chatting with influential people in tech on

inspiring AMAs

Limor Fried

Limor Fried

Dylan Field

Dylan Field

Tommy DeVoss

Tommy DeVoss

Alex Stamos

Alex Stamos

Nicky Case

Nicky Case

Watch them on YouTube →

Fine art was produced during

Arts Week

Explore the gala →
A digitally drawn character with a bright background and wearing a dress. Modern style.@e-lee-za

Finding new ways to

connect

Thanks to COVID-19, this summer was like no other with so many teenagers stuck at home. From treasure hunts to late night Zoom hangouts to a mini hackathon, the community was filled with fun events. Alongside events, the Slack served as a global makerspace (open 24/7) where hackers could hang out.

Join the Slack →
Mini-AMA with Max Stoiber, July 15
Mini-AMA with Max Stoiber, July 15

Thank you for joining!

In collaboration with

GitHubAdafruitArduino